Calgary News Watch

After a four hour debate, the city council decided to back the Calgary curbside recycling plan that was originally going to cost taxpayers $21 a month.

The vote was close and came up 8-7 in favour of beginning a door-to-door recycling that is supposed to begin on January 1, 2009. After meeting for two days to debate the program, Ald. Madeleine King became the deciding vote to support the idea.

Although she did not originally support the program at $21 a month, she stated that,

“At committee, I tried to get it at less than $8, and the committee didn’t buy that…as soon as we coul reduce the cost, I was OK to go ahead with it”

Ald. King went on to say that,

“It’s going to be less than $8. We’ve got more than a year to work on those methods of getting the price down.”

The original recycling plan proposal included the blue box program, the cost of garbage collection and organics. Although the costs are not presumed to exceed $8 because the new program will only deal with glass, plastics and newspapers, the aldermen who voted against it doubt the costs won’t increase. Ald. Ric McIver said,

“That’s pie in the sky. The first piece may stay at 8 bucks but that’s only a component of the $21.”

McIver feels that the city will ultimately have to deal with organic waste such as yard materials to minimize the level of trash going into landfills and goes on to say,

“If you were a betting person, you would say the rest is coming after the election.”

Are you a gambling person and do you think the rest of this proposal is just waiting to hit taxpayers’ pockets until after the election?

News Source – Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Global News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or Search Engine Friendly trackback (rel='external') from your own site.